Last month, I saw Jeff Wright read at the Tompkins Square Library and really enjoyed the poems. He read from several of his books, and also a poem he had recently written. I asked him if I could come over to his place and record him doing a repeat of the reading he did of what he had called his “Top Ten.”
I’ve known Jeff for forty years. I’ve watched him organize every kind of happening, facing the uproar and commotion, working the maelstrom, welcoming the seminal, curating downtown art shows and poetry readings, selflessly and tirelessly promoting others, publishing beautiful substantial magazines like his LiVE MAG! today.
If you need to find Jeff Wright, look for the guy holding the microphone. He’s about to hand it to someone; it might as well be you. Wordsmith extraordinaire, always at his best, Jeff Wright recites his poems for you in the Vimeo below. Enjoy.
You can check out radio poems here:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35452179-radio-poems
Triple Crown is published by Spuyten Duyvil. You can check it out here:
https://www.spuytenduyvil.net/triple-crown.html
Blue Lyre is published by Dos Madres Press. You can check it out here:
https://www.dosmadres.com/shop/blue-lyre-by-jeffrey-cyphers-wright/
And here is a poem from Blue Lyre
BARE SEASON
The late Jim Brodey once instructed me
on composing a New York School poem:
“Use blue and name a couple friends.”
This off-the-cuff take is on-the-button.
Here’s Larry Fagin in Complete Fragments:
“Brodey’s flashing bolt.
Yellow-pink-red-blue-green-black….”
Here’s the deal. Just wow. That’s it.
Ratchet the vernacular like the dickens
with Hippolyte mincing beside you.
Popinjay. Nincompoop. Ninny. Dolt.
Poppycock. Rubbish. Return to the fold.
For starters, try kicks, see what you get.
Rain hammers blue nails into dusk’s chest.
You can check out Jeff’s amazing one and only Live Mag here:
https://livemag.org/about.html
And here is The Wichita Doctors Are Restless, a currently unpublished poem by Jeff that he reads in the Vimeo:
THE WICHITA DOCTORS ARE RESTLESS
Still waiting to be overturned, we cornered
the market on nervous green energy.
Twister alley, your black robes flare.
Your artificial prayers plague the prairies.
Hold me close, under the hanging tree,
oh, deputy of the pellet court.
Night builds its nest on the window’s brow.
Abraham Lincoln is out trick or treating.
The braindead fall for the gag rule,
like unhinged leaves in a leaf chain store.
Like the fall of the Roman Umpire.
A white pumpkin spoofs my bookshelf.
You’re running late and message me.
Crazy love is simply, the icing on the gravy.
At the Tompkins Square Library
.